Enemy at the Gates is a 2001 war film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, starring Joseph Fiennes, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Bob Hoskins and Ed Harris set during the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II.

The film's title is taken from William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad from 1942–1943.^[2] It is based on a duel mentioned in the book that developed between Soviet sniper Vasily Zaitsev and German Major Erwin König.

Plot

In 1942, Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law), a shepherd from the Ural Mountains who is now a soldier in the Red Army, finds himself on the front lines of the Battle of Stalingrad. Sent on a suicidal charge against the invading Germans, he uses impressive marksmanship skills—taught to him by his grandfather from a young age—to save himself and commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes). Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins) arrives in Stalingrad to coordinate the city's defenses and demands ideas to improve morale. Danilov, now a Senior Lieutenant, suggests that the people need figures to idolize, and publishes tales of Vassili's exploits in the army's newspaper that paint him as a national hero and propaganda icon. Vassili is transferred to the sniper division, and he and Danilov become friends. They also both become romantically interested in Tania (Rachel Weisz), a citizen of Stalingrad who has become a Private in the local militia. Danilov has her transferred to an intelligence unit away from the battlefield.

With the Soviet snipers taking an increasing toll on the German forces, German Major Erwin König (Ed Harris) is deployed to Stalingrad to take out Vassili and thus crush Soviet morale. A renowned marksman and head of the German Army sniper school at Zossen, he lures Vassili into a trap and takes out two of his fellow snipers, but Vassili manages to escape. When the Red Army command learns of König's mission, they dispatch his former student Koulikov (Ron Perlman) to help Vassili kill him. However, König tricks Koulikov into revealing his position and kills him with a very skillful shot, shaking Vassili's spirits considerably. Khrushchev pressures Danilov to bring the sniper standoff to a conclusion.

When Tania requests to be reassigned to the sniper division, Danilov asks Vassili to discourage her. Vassili attempts to do so, but relents when Tania tells him how her Jewish parents were murdered by the Germans. Danilov recruits young local boy Sacha Fillipov (Gabriel Thomson), who idolizes Vassili and does small jobs for the Germans in exchange for food, to act as a double agent by passing König false information about Vassili's whereabouts, thus giving Vassili a chance to ambush the Major. Vassili sets a trap for König and manages to wound him, but during a second attempt Vassili falls asleep after many hours and his sniper log is taken by a looting German soldier. The German command takes the log as evidence of Vassili's death and plans to send König home, but the Major does not believe that Vassili is dead. He tells Sacha where he will be next, suspecting that the boy will tell Vassili. Tania and Vassili have meanwhile fallen in love, and the jealous Danilov disparages Vassili in a letter to his superiors.

König spots Tania and Vassili waiting for him at his next ambush, confirming his suspicions about Sacha. He kills the boy and hangs his body from a pole to bait Vassili. Vassili vows to kill König and sends Tania and Danilov to evacuate Sacha's mother (Eva Mattes) from the city, but Tania is wounded by shrapnel en route to the evacuation boats. Thinking her dead, Danilov laments his jealousy for Vassili and his resulting disenchantment with the communist cause. Finding Vassili waiting to ambush König, Danilov intentionally exposes himself in order to reveal the Major's position and is killed. Thinking he has killed Vassili, König goes to inspect the body, but realizes too late that he has fallen into a trap and is in Vassili's sights. He turns to face Vassili, who then kills him. Two months later, after Stalingrad has been liberated and the German forces have surrendered, Vassili finds Tania recovering in a field hospital.

Main cast

• Jude Law – Vassili Zaitsev
• Joseph Fiennes – Commissar Danilov
• Rachel Weisz – Tania Chernova
• Bob Hoskins – Nikita Khrushchev
• Ed Harris – Major Erwin König
• Ron Perlman – Koulikov
• Eva Mattes – Mother Fillipov
• Gabriel Thomson – Sacha Fillipov
• Matthias Habich – General Friedrich Paulus
• Sophie Rois – Ludmilla
• Ivan Shvedoff – Volodya
• Mario Bandi – Anton
• Gennadi Vengerov – Starshina
• Mikhail Matveyev – Grandfather

Locations

• The fighting in Stalingrad was shot in Berlin, Germany.
• The Volga crossing was filmed near Cottbus, Germany.

Historical accuracy

Some Soviet Stalingrad veterans were sufficiently offended by the portrayal of the Red Army, that on 7 May 2001, soon after it was shown in Russia, they addressed their grievances to the State Duma, demanding the film be banned. This request was not granted.^[3]

Historian Antony Beevor suggests in his book, Stalingrad, that, while Zaitsev was a real person, the story of his duel (dramatized in the film) with König is fictional. Although William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad includes a "sniper's duel" between Zaitsev and König, the sequence of events in the film is fictional. Zaitsev, in an interview claims to have engaged in a sniper duel over a number of days. Zaitsev states that after killing the German sniper, and on collecting his tags, he found that he had killed the head of the Berlin Sniper School. ^[4]

Reception

The film was poorly received in the former Soviet Union.^[5] Some Red Army Stalingrad veterans were so offended by inaccuracies in the film and how the Red Army was portrayed that on May 7, 2001, shortly after the film premiered in Russia, they expressed their displeasure in the Duma, demanding a ban of the film.^[6]

The film was received poorly in Germany. Critics claimed that it simplified history and glorified war.^[7][8][9] At the Berlinale film festival, it was partially booed. Annaud stated afterwards that he would not present another film at Berlinale, calling it a "slaughterhouse" and claiming that his movie received much better reception elsewhere.^[10][11]

In the United States, the film received mixed reviews; the most common complaint among even the positive reviews was over the inclusion of what was seen as an unnecessary love-story that detracted from the main plot. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that it "is about two men placed in a situation where they have to try to use their intelligence and skills to kill each other. When Annaud focuses on that, the movie works with rare concentration. The additional plot stuff and the romance are kind of a shame".^[12] New York Magazine's Peter Ranier was less kind, declaring "It's as if an obsessed movie nut had decided to collect every bad war-movie convention on one computer and program it to spit out a script."^[13]

The German-Russian writer Wladimir Kaminer played an extra as a Soviet soldier in the film. In his book Russian Disco (2000), Kaminer criticizes how the Soviet soldiers are portrayed as hooligans getting drunk and playing farting games.

Notes

External links

• Official website
• Enemy at the Gates at the Internet Movie Database
• Enemy at the Gates at AllRovi
• Enemy at the Gates at Rotten Tomatoes
• Enemy at the Gates at Metacritic
• Enemy at the Gates at Box Office Mojo
• Enemy at the Gates Reviewed by David R. Stone, History Department, Kansas State University, published by H-War (June, 2002)
• Idiocy at The Gates: A Foreigner Will Not Notice, a Russian Will Not Forgive Reviewed by Valeri Potapov